George Atanasov

Latest Publications

After many weeks of deliberation, the Massachusetts House and Senate sent a budget to Governor Baker’s desk. This budget passed the Senate 31-5 and the House 153-1 and represents a compromise between the House and Senate...more

The potential policy directions discussed at these hearings ranged from moderate reform to a complete ban on non-compete agreements in Massachusetts, the latter largely supported by start-up and venture capital groups. In the...more

Hearing Overview:
On June 23rd, the Massachusetts Joint Committee on Labor and Workforce Development met to consider legislation relating to the legality and enforcement of non-compete agreements. The committee...more

Responding to criticisms that state regulations are burdensome and make Massachusetts a more costly and less competitive place to live and do business, Governor Charlie Baker signed Executive Order 562 to simplify the...more

On May 22, the Massachusetts Senate unanimously approved a $38.1 billion budget for FY2016. The Senate budget hews closely to the spending plans proposed by the Massachusetts House of Representatives in April and Governor...more

Massachusetts’ Earned Sick Leave Law, which voters passed by ballot initiative last November, is set to become effective in less than two months on July 1, 2015. On April 27, Attorney General Maura Healy’s office released...more

On April 29 the Massachusetts House of Representatives approved a $38.1 billion spending plan for FY2016 by a unanimous vote of 158-0. Over roughly 28 hours of sessions, the House dispensed with over 1,000 amendments to pass...more

Wednesday, the Baker-Polito administration revealed the details of their $38.1 billion FY2016 budget. Seeking to overcome a structural deficit, which at $1.8 billion, represents nearly five percent of the total budget, the...more

Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Robert DeLeo appointed his senior leadership and made assignments to all standing and joint committees. DeLeo kept most of his senior leadership team intact, with Ronald Mariano, Patricia...more

Governor Charlie Baker and Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito announced on Tuesday a series of proposals aimed at closing the Commonwealth’s substantial budget gap for Fiscal Year 2015. According to the current administration,...more

The last several months witnessed a flurry of activity on Beacon Hill: Governor Deval Patrick inked a number of bills as the two-year legislative session drew to an official end, and his successor, Governor Charlie Baker, has...more

Last week, the 2013-2014 Massachusetts legislative session came to a close amid a flurry of activity on Beacon Hill. Lawmakers rushed to finalize and pass priority bills, working past their deadline on Thursday, sending a...more

On June 30th, the eve of the Commonwealth’s new fiscal year, the House and Senate both approved the joint conference committee report on the FY2015 spending plan. Governor Deval Patrick, who left to attend the Panamanian...more

On Friday, Governor Deval Patrick signed into law a $36.5 billion state budget for FY2015, which is nearly $10 billion larger than the budget he proposed back in January 2014. Before signing off on his eighth and final annual...more

On July 1, 2014 the Massachusetts Senate voted for a compromise on employee non-compete agreements, and the Joint Economic and Emerging Technology Committee heard testimony on the same issue. Governor Deval Patrick spurred...more

In a previous article, “Massachusetts Legislature Considers Unemployment Insurance Reform and Minimum Wage Increase,” we outlined the Massachusetts House and Senate’s separate plans to increase the minimum wage and reform the...more

Earlier this year, ML Strategies offered an overview of the Governor’s FY 2015 budget proposal. Now that the House of Representatives has passed its version of the FY 2015 spending plan, we provide an update on the budget...more

Increasing the minimum wage and reforming the unemployment insurance (“UI”) system in Massachusetts are the two major employment issues facing the 2013–2014 Legislature, which comes to a close on July 31, 2014. The Senate and...more

As the budget process heats up on Beacon Hill, ML Strategies will issue periodic updates regarding the process and politics that will shape this year’s budget. We begin by providing an overview of the budget timeline and a...more

On Sunday, four hours before the start of Massachusetts’ new fiscal year, the legislative conference committee tasked with ironing out differences between the House and Senate budget proposals agreed on a final compromise...more

The 188th Massachusetts Legislature began the 2013 – 2014 legislative session on January 2. This alert identifies the key public policy issues that will likely emerge in the current session and offers insight into their...more

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